Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Sports scientists examine the medieval archers of the Mary Rose

A unique project about the historical warship the Mary Rose which is providing information about life in medieval times is benefitting from 21st century technology.

For the past 18 months the Mary Rose Trust has been working with sports scientists from the College of Engineering at Swansea University to discover more about the lives of the medieval archers on board the ship.

When Henry VIII’s warship, which sunk in 1545, was raised from the Solent in 1982, many thousands of medieval artefacts along with 92 fairly complete skeletons of the crew of the Mary Rose were recovered.

Nick Owen, Sport and Exercise Biomechanist from the College of Engineering at Swansea University said, “This sample of human remains offers a unique opportunity to study activity related changes in human skeletons. It is documented that there was a company of archers aboard when the ship sank, at a time when many archers came from Wales and the South West of England."